ISSUE THREE
There is so little left of the tomato plants.
Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat
We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.
I eat my Oreos with relish. No—I mean I relish in the Oreos I eat.
My dad was an inveterate theatergoer in the old country where theatre reigned supreme before the Soviets, under the Soviets, after the Soviets.
On the first day of our new life together, my husband realized that I was not interested in theoretical debate. He said it was okay by him and went out to get some pancake mix.
Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”
I’d never heard of anyone having a second baby right after the first one, but everything was so strange in those early days of motherhood that I just acted on instinct.
I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.
Infant’s Name: A
Delivery Date: August 1, 2002
I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.
It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.
I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.
Taking photographs of my hometown has given me a chance to reflect on people whom I have not valued.
My mother has been dead for two hundred and forty-three days. I’ve had plenty of things in my refrigerator for longer.
Vistas from the American Southwest, catching the light and design in all its strangeness and beauty.
I feel somewhat bad about using the death of my father as an excuse to prolong my trip.
My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”
And then he feels that familiar sensation of drifting—when his body untethers from the material world and he soon dissolves into a fine, floating mist that evaporates into the atmosphere.
Darkness always follows.
I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…
and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place
No matter how you try to ignore it, you look like him. You look like your father.
I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster
In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote
You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.
Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.
Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.
I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.
None speak of how the streets collide in coarse seams like scars, the fresh cobbles unable to level with the ones shaken from their mortar by uncountable seasons.
I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt
Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.
The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.
you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties
how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?
four-thirty a.m.
Could someone hating you really cause a physical unease? Sure, why not.
I am in Rite Aid buying ChapStick and diapers, when people start washing away in the rain.
Still life all the time inspired by scenes of domestic life.
What possible use is this lengthy childhood? Surely there would be a selective advantage in maturing earlier, so children are less vulnerable to predation and mothers are freed up to have more children?
A tortured simper uncoils itself across my mouth as I open another bottle of Penis wine.
this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to
A series of photos taken with expired film.
Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped
Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.